


Plans Change

by kho



Series: Plan Series [2]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Break Up, F/M, Heartbreak
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-24
Updated: 2011-02-24
Packaged: 2017-10-15 22:03:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/165360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kho/pseuds/kho
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>should be read after Change of Plans, though technically this is the prequel to that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Plans Change

“Oh,” Rodney says, when he reads the letter sitting on the kitchen table, sinking into the chair mindlessly. “Oh.”

Jennifer is doing a little dance around the kitchen between chopping up mushrooms and stirring them into the spaghetti sauce. She’s not a cook at all, at least not a good one, but sometimes she likes to pretend she is by slapping some freshly cut mushrooms into the Ragu sauce: Insta-Homemade, she calls it. She pauses with the spoon midair. “Rodney?”

He looks down at the letter. “You’re uh. Your letter from Hopkins.” He gestures towards it and looks up at her. “You’re officially… It’s official.”

Jennifer sets the spoon down on the counter next to the pot, licking a little sauce off of her fingers and then wiping them off on a towel. “Yeah. I uh. I told you I accepted.”

“No, I know, but I didn’t expect,” he says, gesturing. “I guess it didn’t really hit me.”

She comes over to him and frowns at the letter. “Rodney, we talked about this,” she says, looking at him, biting her lip. “You said Maryland was fine. That you were looking forward to taking some time off and doing some independent…” She chews on her lip and takes his hand in hers. “Rodney?”

“Yes, yes, no,” he says, shaking his head and laughing at himself, squeezing her hand in his own. “I know, yes, Maryland is fine.”

She arches an eyebrow at him. “Are you having second thoughts about leaving the stargate program?”

“No, I,” he says, taking a deep breath and patting her hand before letting it go to walk over to the refrigerator, grabbing a beer. “I’m not having second thoughts, I want to be with you, and being with you means leaving the stargate program.”

She watches him, worried, and he can see her brain turning over and over and over. She might be a voo-doo practitioner, but she’s a _genius_ voo-doo practitioner. He can see her sorting and cataloguing all sorts of things while he remains silent, and her worry is going up and up and up.

“You still haven’t talked to them, have you,” Jennifer says, voice low, quiet. Calm.

Rodney thinks of it as the calm before the storm voice, even though he and Jennifer have never actually fought. Jennifer is more prone to remaining silent, her lips pursing as she gives him a look that clearly identifies that he’s fucked up, and then giving him time to figure out what he’s done before sitting down to discuss it with him. It’s one of the reasons why he thinks that she’s the best match he’s found for himself, will find for himself. Because it’s not the pissy kind of silence that most of the women he’s dated use, wielding their silence as a weapon and saying things like, “well if you don’t know what you’ve done, then I’m not going to tell you,” in bitter, spat out words. It’s actually her giving him time.

“No,” he says, twisting the top off of his beer.

She crosses her legs and faces him, watches him take a few swallows of his beer before she speaks. “Rodney, I’ve told you many, many times. Never tell me what I want to hear. Tell me the truth.”

“I have been,” he says, voice rising defensively. He crosses his arms and raises his chin. “I _always_ tell you the truth.”

She smiles sadly. “Then you don’t know, yourself,” she says, tapping her fingers on the table. “We’ve talked about this, Rodney. We’ve had many discussions over the past few months about whether or not you were going to stay here with me or go back with them. You said you’d decided. You said you were sure.”

“I _have_ decided,” he says, walking back over to the table and sitting back down. “I _am_ sure.”

“No, you’re not,” she says, her eyes narrowing in disapproval. “If you were sure you would have talked to Woolsey already. You would have talked to John and Teyla and Ronon. They’re leaving in a week, Rodney. One week.”

Rodney lowers his head. “I know. I just… I don’t know how to have that conversation, Jennifer.”

“You say I’ve had a wonderful time working with you,” she says, taking his hand in hers again. “You say the past five years have been amazing. And now it’s time for me to part ways. Live my own life.”

Rodney looks away from her gaze so she won’t see that he could never say those words. That they would be lies. That this isn’t about him deciding it’s time to part ways. It will _never_ be time to part ways. This is about Jennifer, and about being with her, and about how if he goes back to Pegasus he won’t be able to be with her anymore.

“And if he tries to convince me to stay,” Rodney asks, looking back at her.

“John,” she asks, and he nods. She closes her eyes and pinches the bridge of her nose. “Well I’m certain he will.”

“What do I say then,” Rodney says, gesturing helplessly. “How do I argue?”

She leans back in her chair. “I would hope you’d know what to say to that, Rodney. You tell him the reasons you decided to stay. And you deal with the fact that he may be angry at first but that he’ll work past it.”

“And if he doesn’t,” Rodney asks, panic rising in his throat.

This has always been the part he’s never been able to get past, the part he’s never been able to rehearse in his head. The part that’s kept him from talking to him, each and every time he’s decided the time had come. Talking to Woolsey will be easy, and Teyla and Ronon will understand and let him go without argument. John, though. John will balk. John will argue, and Rodney won’t have any kind of answer for him that he’ll accept.

Jennifer extracts her hand from his and only then does he realize that he’s been squeezing her hand tightly in his own. Her fingers are red and she massages them gently as she studies him. “Okay. Stop. What are you doing?”

He frowns. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, stop it, Rodney,” Jennifer says, lips pursing slightly. “Stop lying to yourself. You don’t want to do this at all. You want to go with them, don’t you?”

He shakes his head. “It’s not that I don’t want to do this, Jennifer,” he says, mouth flattening into a tight line. “It’s that it’s just, not that easy.” He jerks a hand through the air and laughs an abortive sort of laugh. “It’s not easy for me to make this decision.”

“And here I thought it was already made,” she says tersely, crossing her arms over her chest.

“It is,” he grits out, draining his beer and standing, walking over to deposit it in the sink. He goes back to the fridge and grabs another.

“Then it shouldn’t be a problem at all,” Jennifer says. “I’ve never known you to be a coward Rodney. Should be no problem at all for you to walk into Woolsey’s office and say you’re leaving.”

Rodney rolls his eyes. “You think this is about Woolsey? I could care less about talking to Woolsey.”

“No of course it’s not about Woolsey,” she says quietly. “It’s about John. It’s all about telling him, isn’t it?”

“It’s about them,” Rodney says, staring out of the window out to the street below. Watching the cars go by. “I’ve been with my team for five years, Jennifer. Five years. I’ve learned so much from them, I’ve watched them bleed and, in some cases, almost die. I’ve watched them come back from the dead. I delivered Teyla’s _baby_ ,” he says, turning to face her. “It’s not fucking _easy_ , Jennifer.”

She leans forward, her elbow on the table. “I never said it would be easy,” she says, no longer sounding pissed, but worse. Sounding sad. “I never asked you to choose me.”

He leans back against the stove, the heat of the pot warming his back. “Jennifer.”

“If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t even consider leaving would you,” she says, meeting his eyes, her head propped in her hand. “All of this business about finally being able to publish, about breaking your way back into the science community, that’s all just bonus, isn’t it? It’s not the reason, it’s what you get _also_. Because I’m the reason.”

His eyes flicker away guiltily. “Listen.”

“No, Rodney, this is important. Because I’m not going to be the one you resent,” she says, voice strong and unwavering. “You deciding to leave is your decision, not mine.”

He snorts. “And you’ll what, wait for me? If I decide to go and you stay, you’re saying you’ll wait for me?”

She gives him a look, a hurt look that crawls inside his stomach to form a hard knot. “You’d go if I said I would, wouldn’t you,” she asks faintly. “Well the answer is no. I probably won’t wait. If you go, you’ll be leaving this relationship.”

“Yes,” Rodney says, nodding, throwing his hands out. “I know that. And so I’m staying.”

“No,” she shouts, waving her own hands as well, looking completely exasperated with him. “That’s not what I want. Maybe you’ll be happy at first, maybe I’ll be enough at first, but eventually Rodney? One night we’ll have a stupid, insignificant fight, or even a big, huge one. Maybe one day we break up. And you’ll think, Rodney. You’ll sit there and you’ll think, fuck her. Fuck her, if it weren’t for her I would have been in Atlantis and none of this would have mattered.”

Rodney rolls his eyes. “I would not.”

“Yes, Rodney, you will,” she says. She shakes her head. “You will, you’ll resent me. The day will come when you’ll resent me. And I’m not okay with that.”

“I’m not ready,” he says, hugging his arms to himself tighter. “I’m not done with this yet. With us. I don’t think I’ll ever be ready for us to be done. Jennifer, I want to be with you forever.”

“And that would be nice, Rodney, but we don’t have a magic eight ball,” she says, sniffing and wiping at her eyes. “We don’t know that forever won’t be six months.”

He clears his throat and avoids looking at her. “So fine,” he says. “Fine, in six months I’ll go. In a year. In six years. Whenever, if that day comes, I’ll go then.”

She shakes her head. “No.”

His hands clench into fists. “Why are you doing this? Why are you forcing my hand? I’ve made my decision, Jennifer.”

“Yes you have,” she says quietly, snorting a little. “It’s just not the one you’ve convinced yourself of.”

“I’m staying here, with you,” he says forcefully, angry. “I’m staying, and we’re going to move to Maryland, and I’m going to publish and get back into the community and tell Bill Nye and fucking Degrassi-Tyson that they’re morons, and we’re going to get married and have kids and be fucking happy!”

“Because you decree it so,” she asks, eyebrows raising as she looks at him. “Because you can just snap your fingers and have that be our story?”

“Yes,” he shouts. “Yes, because I said so!”

“Okay,” she says, standing and walking over to the cordless phone and picking it up. “Okay, then call John,” she says, handing it to him. “Call him and tell him.” She crosses her arms as he looks at the phone. “Go on, I’m waiting.”

“Over the phone,” he asks, his heart pounding out of his chest. “ Now? I… don’t you think I owe him this in person?”

“That’s the thing, Rodney,” she says, leaning against the counter next to him. “You’ve had three months to tell him in person, and you haven’t. We decided this three _months_ ago.”

“Well excuse the hell out of me if I don’t know how to say to John, yes, hi, I’m abandoning you,” he shouts, gesturing with the phone. “After five years of living and breathing and laughing and panicking and celebrating with you, I’m leaving you! I don’t know how to say that to him, Jennifer! I don’t know how to leave him!”

The look on her face isn’t shock so much as it is recognition. “Wow,” she says. “So, are you lying to me, or to yourself about that?”

He slams the phone down on the counter. “What are you talking about?”

“I mean, I’ve always kind of wondered, but that speech there, Rodney?” She blinks slowly and steps back from him. “Wow. I mean, you should see your face. It’s written all over it, clear as day.”

He frowns at her, a rush of blood swimming in his ears as he replays what he’d said back to himself. “What… what’s written all over--”

“You’ve been saying them,” she says, ticking off points on her fingers. “Hard to leave them, Ronon, and Teyla, and John. But really it’s him. Really, Rodney, it’s all about John.”

“He’s,” Rodney starts, but the words get stuck in his throat. “He’s team. He’s… he’s John. He’s my best friend, he’s the guy that’s kept me alive for the past five years, he’s who I talk to, he’s who--”

“You love,” she says, nodding. “I get that now. Not that it’s a shock or anything, but I always thought you at least _knew_.”

“I…” He shakes his head and scrubs at his face. “I, he’s my best friend, so yes of course I love him.”

“If he was staying as well,” Jennifer says, interrupting him. “If he wasn’t going back, would we even be having this discussion?”

Rodney falters, mouth opening and closing.

“If he weren’t a factor at all, would you even hesitate to leave the stargate program,” Jennifer asks, in that way that lets him know she’s not really asking at all. In that way that lets him know she already knows the answer. “Would you be conflicted then?”

“Yes,” he says, and he means it, but it feels like a lie. From her expression, he can tell that she heard it as one too. “Perhaps less conflicted, but yes, I would still be conflicted. Atlantis was, _is_ , perhaps the most important scientific discovery in the past _century_ , Jennifer, and I’m…” He spreads his hands. “I’m in _charge_. Not, not of the city, but of the science.”

Jennifer shakes her head. “You’re not staying,” she says, reaching out and grasping his hand. “You’re going back.”

He shakes his head. “It’s not about John,” he says, but his inner voice calls him a liar and a coward, so he closes his eyes and grits his teeth. “It’s not _only_ about John.”

“It is,” she says, gripping his hand tighter. “It might not only be about him, but if he wasn’t a factor at all, you’d be staying.”

“I want to stay,” he says, pleading, covering her hand with his own. “Jennifer, I don’t want to lose you.”

She shakes her head. “No,” she says, blinking fresh tears up at him.

He feels a weight of finality settling in his chest, and it backs tears up in his throat. “But I love you.”

She closes her eyes and looks away, and he sees a tear fall down her cheek. “You idiot,” she says, laughing softly. “I love you too, don’t you know that’s why I’m doing this?”

“I can’t believe you’re ending this,” Rodney says, feeling his own tears pressing up behind his eyes, threatening to spill over. “I can’t believe you’re making me go.”

“One day,” she says, squeezing his arm. “One day you’ll see that it’s not that I’m ending this, it’s that I’m making you do what’s best for you. For us. Because if you stay, that would end us too, and you don’t seem to get that now. I just need you to promise me you'll do me one last favor.”

He closes his eyes and pries her hand off of his arm, clenching his teeth. “What favor,” he asks, wanting to leave. He doesn’t know where he’ll go, but he wants out. Can’t stand looking at her for one more second.

“Admit it to yourself,” she says. “That it’s him. That you’re in love with him.” He glares at her and she smiles, even laughs a little, raising her hand. “You don’t need to admit it to me, I see now that this is one of those things that you don’t know about yourself. Just. One day,” she says. “Think about it. Think back to this conversation and you’ll see that I didn’t decide anything you hadn’t already decided and then rejected.”

He shakes his head. “You’re wrong.”

She reaches over and threads her fingers through his hair and he closes his eyes against the pain that sweeps through him at the gesture. “Come on,” she whispers, stepping closer, pressing her body into his. “Come to bed with me one more time.”

“Jen,” he breathes.

“Come on,” she says, and pulls.

A week later he sits in the chair room with John, hunched miserably over his laptop as Woolsey makes a speech over the intercom about returning Atlantis home. John looks down at him from the chair and grins, kicking at him.

“I’m so glad you’re coming back with us,” John says. “I was actually kind of worried there when Woolsey said Jennifer had resigned.”

Rodney looks up at him and thinks, _’god damn you Jennifer, you always had to be right didn’t you.’_ He mumbles, “Whatever,” and looks back down at his computer.

“Hey,” John says, voice concerned, toe kicking Rodney’s shin again. “You okay, buddy? I’m sorry about.. you know, about Jennifer.”

“Just get us back to Pegasus,” Rodney says, and then stands, tucking his laptop under his arm. “I’m going back to the control room. I can do more there.”

“Hey,” John calls as he walks out of the room, “Rodney, come on, I thought you were gonna keep me company!”

Rodney doesn’t turn back.


End file.
